Routines are one of the most important aspects of sports that athletes can develop to improve their training and competitive performances. The fundamental value of routines is that they ensure total preparation in athletes’ efforts. Routines enable athletes to be completely physically, technically, tactically, and mentally ready to perform their best. I don’t know a world-class athlete in any sport who does not use routines in some part of his or her competitive preparations. Routines are most often used before competitions to make sure that athletes are prepared to perform their best. They can also be valuable in two other areas. Routines can be developed in training to ensure that athletes get the most out of their practice time. Routines are also important between performances of a competition to help athletes get ready for subsequent performances (for sports comprised of a series of short performances; to be discussed in a future post). There are a lot of things in sport that athletes can’t control such as weather conditions and their opponent. Ultimately, the only thing athletes can control is themselves. Sport routines can increase control over their performances by enabling them to directly prepare every area that impacts their sport. Those areas athletes can control include their equipment (is your gear in optimal condition?), their body (are you physically and technically warmed up?), and their mind (are you at prime focus and intensity?). Routines also allow athletes to make their preparation more predictable by knowing they’re systematically covering every area that will influence performance. Athletes can also expect the unexpected. In other words, they can plan for every eventuality that could arise during a competition. If athletes can reduce the things that can go wrong and be prepared for those things that do, they’ll be better able to stayed focused and relaxed before and during the competition.

Despite what many athletes and coaches believe, competitions aren’t won on the day of the competition, just before the competition, or even during the competition. Rather, they are won in training in the weeks and months leading up to the competition. What you do in training will determine how you perform and the ultimate outcome of the competition. Training is where the development of Prime Sport begins. It’s the place where all of the physical, technical, tactical, and mental requirements of sport are established. Despite this importance, I’m constantly amazed by the poor quality of training that I see athletes engage in, even at the world-class and professional levels. I see poor effort, ineffective focus, and little intensity. Yet these athletes expect to perform their best in competition. That’s unlikely to happen because they’re not engaging in prime training. Prime training involves maintaining the highest level of effort, focus, and intensity consistently throughout a practice session. Without prime training, Prime Sport will never be achieved. Too often, I see athletes begin training without any clear idea of what they’re doing there. They have nothing in particular they’re working on to improve. When this happens, athletes are not only not improving, they’re also making it more difficult to improve because they’re further ingraining old and ineffective skills, which makes it harder to learn new skills.

I define Prime Time as the most important game of your life in which you’ll be up against your toughest opponents and competing under the most difficult conditions. Prime Time is what sports are all about. It’s the reason why you work so hard on all aspects of your sport. And Prime Time is probably the reason why you’re reading my article. Prime Time is that moment that defines you as an athlete. It shows you and others how skilled you are, how well conditioned you are, and, most importantly, how strong you are mentally. All of my work in the psychology of sport is directed toward your achieving Prime Sport, playing at a consistently high level under the most challenging conditions, in Prime Time. This notion of Prime Time emerged from my work with one young athlete who was making a difficult, though successful, transition from high-level junior competition to professional sports. What became clear to both of us was that the world’s best athletes hold little resemblance to lower-level athletes. Sure, they compete in the same sport and go through the same motions. But what enables them to be at that rarified level goes beyond just exceptional physical ability. The best athletes in the world don’t just do things better, they do things differently, particularly those things that occur between their ears. These lessons that we learned together helped this athlete overcome the challenges of professional sports and enabled him to progress up the world rankings. They also taught me lessons that athletes at all levels could use to raise their level of play and achieve their highest level of sports success. These lessons are divided into categories: competitive and mental (I’ll discuss the mental lessons next week). Read More...

The greatest challenge that athletes have is to play their best when it really counts. Regardless of the level of competition, whether a state championship, nationals, the Olympics, or World Series, every athlete needs to rise to the occasion of the big game (I will use ‘game’ to denote any sports competition including those that [...]

The sad reality of competitive sports is that many young athletes either have or will hurt themselves so seriously that it will end their seasons and potentially their careers. The good news is that surgical and rehabilitative technology has become so advanced that a full physical recovery from an injury that two decades ago might have been career-ending is now commonplace. But another reality of physical injuries is that the mind gets damaged too, but little attention is paid to how the absence of “mental rehab” can prevent athletes from returning to or improving on their pre-injury level of performance. As a result, I thought I would share some ideas I have about how injured athletes can ensure that their minds recover as fully as do their bodies.

A must-watch sports video. If you aren't in awe or inspired after watching it, you might want to check to see if you have a pulse!

One of your most essential goals in your children's lives as athletes is to have them gain ownership of their participation. They need to feel that their sport is their thing. But ownership isn’t just something that they can gain on their own. Rather, it is a gift you give them that offers so many [...]